We’re happy to share that Lisa Taddeo, an incoming MFA candidate in fiction, won a Pushcart Prize for her short story “42”! The story was published in issue 36 of the New England Review last year, and can be read here.

Congratulations, Lisa! We’re looking forward to reading more of your stories this fall.

Lisa Taddeo contributes to Esquire, New York, and Glamour, among others. She has published fiction in the New England Review and Esquire. Her pieces have been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Political Writing. She is currently at work on her debut nonfiction book for Simon & Schuster about desire and sexuality in America, and is a candidate for an MFA in Fiction in 2017.

We’re excited to announce that Emma Duffy-Comparone (Fiction 2012), who is currently on a fellowship at Yaddo, has won a second Pushcart Prize! The prize is for her story “The Devil’s Triangle,” which was originally published in the New England Review, and will appear in The Pushcart Prize XLI: Best of the Small Presses in November 2016. And, if that weren’t enough, Emma was recently hired as an assistant professor of creative writing at Merrimack College.

Way to go, Emma! Congratulations!

Emma Duffy-Comparone’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, New England Review, One Story, AGNI, and elsewhere. A recipient of two Pushcart Prizes (XXXIX and XLI), she has also received awards from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Yaddo Corporation, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She will join Merrimack College in the fall as an assistant professor of creative writing.

Exciting news from Dariel Suarez (Fiction 2012): One of Dariel’s stories, “Marching Men,” is being taught at Brown University this semester through the Latina/o Studies Department! Dariel wrote and workshopped “Marching Men” in Leslie Epstein’s class here at BU. The story was published in Prairie Schooner‘s summer 2014 issue.

In addition, Dariel has been invited to speak at Brown by faculty in the American and Ethnic Studies Department. He’ll be visiting on March 1 to co-teach a class on his story, give a public reading, and have dinner with faculty and students.

Congratulations, Dariel! What an honor. We wish you the best at Brown!

Dariel Suarez is the author of the chapbook In The Land of Tropical Martyrs, available from Backbone Press. He earned his M.F.A. in fiction at Boston University and is one of the founding editors of Middle Gray Magazine. He has taught creative writing at Boston University, the Boston Arts Academy, and Boston University’s Metropolitan College. Dariel’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and magazines, including Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, The Florida Review, Southern Humanities Review, and The Caribbean Writer, as well as several anthologies. Dariel is currently finishing revisions on a novel about a Cuban political prisoner, titled The Playwright’s House.

We’re excited to share that Emma Duffy-Comparone has recently published two short stories! “The Devil’s Triangle” appears in the current issue of New England Reviewand “Plagiarism” is in the November 2015 issue of The Sun. We’re also happy to welcome Emma back to BU as our instructor of Fiction Writing at MET College next semester.

Congratulations, Emma!

Emma Duffy-Comparone’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, New England Review, One Story, The Pushcart Prize XXXIX and elsewhere. Recently a guest prose editor of The Pushcart Prize XL, she teaches at Tufts University.

We’re happy to announce that Shubha Sunder (Fiction 2012) has won the 2015 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for her short story! She began writing the story, “Jungleman,” while in Leslie Epstein’s fiction workshop here at BU. It was released in Crazyhorse just this week. You can read an interview with Shubha on the Crazyhorse blog, here.

Congratulations, Shubha!

Shubha Sunder is a 2012 graduate of the BU Creative Writing Program, which awarded her the Florence Engell Randall Graduate Fiction Award and a Leslie Epstein Fellowship for travel to Russia. Her fiction has most recently appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Bangalore Review, and Narrative Magazine, where it was a winner of “30 Below.” She has won scholarships to Sewanee and Breadloaf and currently lives in Boston, where she is at work on her first novel, set in her hometown of Bangalore, India.

I’m excited to announce that my former classmate, Cara Bayles (Fiction 2013),won the Chautauqua Journal Editors’ Prize! Cara first wrote the winning story, “Ostracita,” for a workshop with Leslie Epstein here at BU. The piece will automatically be nominated for the Pushcart Prize as a condition of the contest.

Congrats, Cara! and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for the Pushcart.

Cara Bayles’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Meridian (University of Virginia), Chautauqua Literary Journal, Ruminate, Trop, and the anthology Watching the Cash Roll in Since 2012. She received a 2014-2015 Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State University to work on her novel. She is also the recipient of a Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship in Fiction, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and a Tennessee Williams scholarship to attend the 2015 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is a graduate of Boston University’s MFA program. As an award-winning journalist, she’s spent the past six years covering the streets of Boston and the bayous of southern Louisiana.

Carla Panciera’s (poetry ’87) short story collection, Bewildered, was chosen by Pam Houston to receive the Grace Paley Prize for short fiction! The book was published by the University of Massachusetts in the fall of 2014, and was the first collection to have been written by a Massachusetts writer since UMass began publishing winning titles from this series in 1990.

“What links these stories,” Panciera said, “is what links all of us: The desire to belong, the need to heal, the fear of what happens next.”

Congratulations, Carla!

Carla Panciera received her MA in Poetry from BU in 1987. She has published two collections of poetry. Bewildered is her first book of fiction.

Shubha Sunder (Fiction 2012) is currently at work on her first novel, titled Boomtown Girl. Her stories have most recently appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, The Bangalore Review, and Narrative Magazine, where she was a winner of the 2012 “30 Below” contest. At BU she won the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and the Shmuel Traum Prize for her translation of Marcel Proust. She also won the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Award, and a Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship, which took her to Russia. She lives in Jamaica Plain, Boston.

Terrific news from Beth O’Sullivan (fiction 1983), whose short story, “Swings,” was published in the Belle Reve Literary Journal. You can read the full story here. Beth studied fiction at BU with Leslie Epstein and Jayne Anne Phillips, who will be re-joining our faculty this fall as a Visiting Professor.

Congratulations, Beth!

Beth O’Sullivan studied writing with a fellowship at the Boston University Creative Writing Program. She has published book reviews in The Boston Herald and stories in Free Parking, Sidelines,236 Journal, The Tower Journal, Belle Reve Literary Journal, and upcoming in 99 Pine Street and After Happy Hour Review. The support of two patrons enables her to write fiction in Paris part of the year. She advocates for others to similarly support individual artists. It was just such patronship support that enabled To Kill A Mockingbird to be written.

Terrific news for Dariel Suarez (Fiction 2012), whose book of short stories, A Kind of Solitude, has been selected as a finalist for the New American Press Fiction Prize! The official announcement can be found here. The book includes several short stories that Dariel worked on while in the MFA program.

In addition, a story from the collection, “Otto’s Body,” has been accepted by the press’s Editor-In-Chief for publication in MAYDAY Magazine, where the contest finalists will be highlighted.

Congratulations, Dariel!

Dariel Suarez is the author of the chapbook In The Land of Tropical Martyrs, available from Backbone Press. He earned his M.F.A. in fiction at Boston University and is one of the founding editors of Middle Gray Magazine. He has taught creative writing at Boston University, the Boston Arts Academy, and Boston University’s Metropolitan College. Dariel’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and magazines, including Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, The Florida Review, Southern Humanities Review, and The Caribbean Writer, as well as several anthologies. Dariel is currently finishing revisions on a novel about a Cuban political prisoner, titled The Playwright’s House.